On this date in 1497 supporters of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola conducted a monumental bonfire of the vanities, and, although not the first of its kind, has since been taken as the iconic event of its type (as well as being the last for some time thereafter). A bonfire of the vanities (falò delle vanità) was the burning of objects such as cosmetics, art, and books condemned by authorities as exemplifications of, or provocations towards, sin. At Carnival in Florence in 1497, Savonarola’s followers collected and publicly burned thousands of such objects. Bonfires of the vanities were not invented by Savonarola, but had been a common accompaniment to the outdoor sermons of San Bernardino di Siena in the first half of the 15th century. The focus of this destruction was nominally on objects that might tempt one to sin, including overt items of vanity such as mirrors, cosmetics, and fine dresses, but also included playing cards, musical instruments, books that were deemed to be immoral, such as works by Boccaccio, and manuscripts of secular songs, as well as artworks, including paintings and sculpture.

Fra Girolamo Savonarola was a Dominican friar who was assigned to work in Florence in 1490, largely thanks to the request of Lorenzo de’ Medici – an irony, considering that within a few years Savonarola became one of the foremost enemies of the house of Medici and helped to bring about their downfall in 1494. Savonarola campaigned against what he considered to be the artistic and social excesses of Renaissance Italy, preaching with vigor against any sort of luxury. His power and influence expanded mightily, so that in time he became the effective ruler of Florence, and even had soldiers for his protection following him around everywhere.

Beginning in February 1495, during Carnival, Savonarola began to host his regular “bonfire of the vanities.” He collected various objects that he considered to be objectionable: irreplaceable manuscripts, ancient sculptures, antique and contemporary paintings, priceless tapestries, and many other valuable works of art, as well as mirrors, musical instruments, books of divination, astrology, and magic. He destroyed the works of Ovid, Propertius, Dante, and Boccaccio. So great was his influence that he even managed to obtain the cooperation of major contemporary artists such as Sandro Botticelli and Lorenzo di Credi, who reluctantly consigned some of their own works to his bonfires. Anyone who tried to object found their hands being forced by teams of ardent Savonarola supporters. These supporters called themselves Piagnoni (Weepers) after a public nickname that was originally intended as an insult.

Savonarola’s influence did not go unnoticed by the higher church officials, however, and his excesses earned him the disdain of Pope Alexander VI. He was eventually excommunicated on May 13th, 1497, and executed on May 23, 1498 by being hung on a cross and burned to death. Ironically, the papal authorities would take a leaf out of Savonarola’s book on censorship, because the day after his execution they gave word that anyone in possession of the Friar’s writings had four days to turn them over to a papal agent to be destroyed. Anyone who failed to do so faced excommunication.

Although it is widely reported that the Florentine artist Sandro Botticelli burned several of his paintings based on classical mythology in the great Florentine bonfire of 1497, the historical record on this is not clear. According to the art historian Giorgio Vasari, Botticelli was a partisan of Savonarola: “He was so ardent a partisan that he was thereby induced to desert his painting, and, having no income to live on, fell into very great distress.” Writing several centuries later, Orestes Brownson, an apologist for Savonarola, mentions artwork only by Fra Bartolomeo, Lorenzo di Credi, and “many other painters,” along with “several antique statues.”

Art historian Rab Hatfield argues that one of Botticelli’s paintings, The Mystical Nativity, is based on the sermon Savonarola delivered on Christmas Eve, 1493.

The event has been represented or mentioned in varying degrees of detail in a number of works of historical fiction, including George Eliot’s Romola (1863), E. R. Eddison’s A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941), Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961), Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s The Palace (1978), Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient – part two 1992, Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley’s If at Faust You Don’t Succeed (1993), Timothy Findley’s Pilgrim (1999), Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason’s Rule of Four (2004), the novel I, Mona Lisa by Jeanne Kalogridis (2006), the Showtime series The Borgias, The Sky (Italy) and Netflix (North America) series Borgia, and The Botticelli Affair by Traci L. Slatton (2013). As a metaphor, Tom Wolfe used the event and ritual as the title for his 1987 novel TheBonfire of the Vanities with a film adaptation of the same name. Margaret Atwood’s works allude to the Bonfire, as in her dystopian novels The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), and Oryx and Crake (2003). It is also depicted in the video game Assassin’s Creed II, in which Savonarola is one of the antagonists. Jordan Tannahill’s 2016 play Botticelli in the Fire is a fictional retelling of the events leading up to the Bonfire of the Vanities.

I will turn to Maestro Martino author of Libro de Arte Coquinaria (Book on the Art of Cooking) (c. 1465), for today’s recipe. Martino de Rossi was a culinary expert who was considered unequalled at the time and is considered by some (anachronistically) the Western world’s first celebrity chef. He was probably born in northern Italy (in or near Milan) and made his career across Italy. He was the chef at the Roman palazzo of the papal chamberlain (camerlengo), the Patriarch of Aquileia. Martino was applauded by his peers, earning him the epitaph of the prince of cooks. His book is considered a milestone in Italian gastronomic literature, and he a transitional figure from Medieval to Renaissance cuisine. The whole book is available in English translation, of average quality, and you could choose recipes that graced the palates of the vainest of Renaissance Italians. Here is his recipe for an herb frittata, called “frictata” in the 15th century, that I would call modest. The recipe has no measurements, but is fairly straightforward. You can make a plain frittata, one using the poaching water of some herbs, or another using the herbs themselves. My translation is fairly literal.

Beat eggs very well with a little water and a little milk to make it [the frittata] softer; also a little good cheese, grated, and cook it in good butter because it will be fattier. Note that, for it to be good, it should not be stirred nor cooked too much. If you wish to make it green, do the same as above and add the cooking water from the following herbs: chard, a generous amount of parsley, borage, mint, marjoram, and a lesser amount of sage, passing them through a sieve to obtain their water; then remove the herbs that will have been crushed in the sieve. And to make a frittata another way with herbs is to take the above herbs, finely chop them and fry them in a little good butter or oil, mixing with eggs and the other ingredients mentioned above you make the frittata and cook it carefully, well seasoned, and not cooked too much.

Today is supposedly the anniversary of the Banquet of Chestnuts (or Ballet of Chestnuts) which refers to a supper purportedly held in the Papal Palace by former Cardinal Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI on 30th October 1501. An account of the banquet is preserved in a Latin diary by Protonotary Apostolic and Master of Ceremonies Johann Burchard (it is titled Liber Notarum), but its accuracy is disputed. Burchard is cited as a primary source but no one believes that he was actually in attendance. Also, his account is written in language that is uncharacteristic of the rest of the diary entries, so it may be a later interpolation. Nonetheless, it’s an amusing story, even if fictional. Worth a tip of the hat and a recipe or two.

According to Burchard’s account, the banquet was given in Cesare’s apartments in the Palazzo Apostolico. Fifty prostitutes or courtesans were in attendance for the entertainment of the banquet guests. Burchard describes the scene in his Diary:

. . . Cesare Borgia arranged a banquet in his chambers in the Vatican with “fifty honest prostitutes”, called courtesans, who danced after dinner with the attendants and others who were present, at first in their garments, then naked. After dinner the candelabra with the burning candles were taken from the tables and placed on the floor, and chestnuts were strewn around, which the naked courtesans picked up, creeping on hands and knees between the chandeliers, while the Pope, Cesare, and his sister Lucretia looked on. Finally, prizes were announced for those who could perform the act [orgasm] most often with the courtesans, such as tunics of silk, shoes, barrettes, and other things.

To begin with, this account was dismissed as highly improbable by many contemporaries. The Borgias were certainly not especially pleasant and upright people, but a lot of their bad press was based on propaganda circulated by enemies. That is, they were not above killing anyone who got in their way, but that was not especially unusual at the time. Machiavelli modeled The Prince in part on Cesare and was an admirer. I suppose that might be faint praise in some people’s eyes. You’ll find my thoughts on Cesare and Lucrezia here:

Although it may sound a little odd to modern ears, I think there is a great difference between bumping someone off because he is in the way, and having a lewd sex party. I will also (in limited fashion) defend pope Alexander against the worst accusations. Sure, he was openly sexually active as pope (and as cardinal before that), but those were the norms of the times. Celibacy for the clergy had been around for some time, but it was not taken as seriously then as it is now. Besides, Alexander was the first pope to openly acknowledge that he fathered his children, set them up well in life, and clearly was very devoted to them. Certainly, he favored his family in appointments and wealth as pope, but there was more than nepotism at stake. The Borgias were from Spain and their power in Italy was resented by noble Italian families, such as the Sforzas, who saw them as opportunistic interlopers and, as such, were always seeking ways to undercut them. Alexander’s favoritism towards his family was, therefore, as much protection against his enemies as it was paternal affection. By the standards of most modern historians, Alexander is considered a shrewd and just diplomat and politician. From the outset he did a great deal to rid the clergy of the most evidently corrupt and self-serving appointees, for example.

So, is Burchard’s account of the banquet accurate? I seriously doubt it. Alexander was not Caligula.

Vatican researcher Right Reverend Monsignor Peter de Roo (1839–1926), rejected the story of the “fifty courtesans” as described in Louis Thuasne’s edition of Burchard’s diary (vol. 3). While granting that Cesare Borgia may have indeed given a feast at the Vatican, de Roo attempts, through exhaustive research, to refute the notion that the Borgias—certainly not the pope—could have possibly participated in “a scene truly bestial” such as Burchard describes, on grounds that it would be inconsistent with Alexander’s essentially decent, though much maligned, character, and that the majority of writers at the time either questioned the story or rejected it as outright falsehood. He also notes that the writing style is not consistent with Burchard’s other writing. De Roo concludes that a more credible explanation for the alleged “orgy” is that it is a later interpolation of events into Burchard’s diary by those hostile to Alexander:

To support the interpolated story, the enemies of pope Alexander VI bring forth of late other writers of the time. So does Thuasne produce Matarazzo, or the Chronicle ascribed to him. But Matarazzo essentially alters the tale, taking away its greatest odium, when he replaces Burchard’s courtesans and valets with ladies and gentlemen of the court. Thuasne also quotes Francis Pepi, who writes that it was Cesar de Borgia, not the Pontiff, who invited low harlots, and who cuts away the most abominable details, by saying that they passed the night in dancing and laughing, and by leaving out the presence of Lucretia de Borgia. The anonymous letter to Silvio Savelli is also mentioned to prop the report of Burchard’s diary. This letter, however, states only that the courtesans were invited to eat at the palace and offered a most shocking sight. It notices no further particulars nor the presence of any of the Borgias.

As always, to be scrupulously fair, de Roo is hardly a disinterested party in all of this. The Catholic church has spent a lot of time and energy cleaning up the history of the papacy. From the historical perspective I find this effort completely unnecessary. The times were what they were, and popes were what they were. But if your perspective is that the church embodies timeless and universal truths and moral values, it’s not possible to adopt that kind of relativistic view. I have no horse in this race, so I don’t care whether the banquet happened as described or not. I am disposed to think that it did not, because it seems out of place even for the times. I also accept the principle of oral transmission in which stories easily get embellished when passed by word of mouth. De Roo points out the possible confusion between the words for “courtier” and “courtesan,” and also that in the original telling of the story it was reported that some guests took off some of their clothes (because the room was hot) before they commenced dancing, and that this act, in itself, would have been notable. From there it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine enemies reporting the story going from removing an outer garment to dancing stark naked.

When I gave recipes for Lucrezia Borgia I used Libro de arte coquinaria (c. 1465) by Martino de Rossi, who is known to have been the head chef at the Vatican at the end of his career, so it is possible he was chef to Pope Alexander. Whether the banquet happened or not, and whether de Rossi was the chef or not, the recipes are quite suitable for the period and many can be recreated. Here’s several for you to mull in the original and in my translation (with some notes).

First, take some lean meat from the haunch and cut it into long slices and beat it on a cutting board or table using the knife handle. Take some salt and ground fennel seeds and spread over the cutlets. Then take some parsley, marjoram, and good lardo* and chop together with some good spices and spread this mixture over the cutlets. Roll them and cook them on a spit, but do not let them get too dry over the flame.

* It is important to note that lardo is not lard, as it is normally translated. Lardo is specially prepared pork fat that some Italians eat raw in slices or with bread.

To prepare roast pullet you need good coals. When it is finished roasting, take some orange juice, or good verjuice mixed with rose water, sugar, and cinnamon. Put the pullet on a dish, dress it with the above mixture and send to the table.

[This recipe is rather simple, but if you wanted you could use the plain sauce as a marinade for chicken pieces before grilling them, or use it as a basting sauce when roasting the chicken.]

First clean and quarter the chickens, or cut them into small pieces. Put them in a pan to fry with some good salted pork fat turning often with a spoon. When the meat is almost cooked discard most of the fat in the pan. Then take some good verjuice, two egg yolks, a little stock and some good spice, and mix all these with enough saffron to make it yellow. Put the mix in the pan with the meat and let it boil a little until it is cooked as you like. Then take a small amount of finely chopped parsley and add it to the soffrito and turn it on to a dish and send it to the table. This soffritto can be sweet or sour according to general tastes or according to the taste of your master.

[A version of this dish used to be one of my favorites. You’ll find it these days, occasionally, throughout Italy, Spain, and France.]

Author

My name is Juan Alejandro Forrest de Sloper. Daily I post an anniversary with a suitable recipe du jour. Although the anniversary material is often really prominent, try to remember that, first and foremost, this is a FOOD BLOG.

Please note that if you are more comfortable in a language other than English there is a Google translate app in this sidebar.

[Photo: Denise Yanko]

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